Bollywood movies and their signature song and dance spectacles are an aesthetic familiar to people around the world, and Bollywood music now provides the rhythm for ads marketing goods such as computers and a beat for remixes and underground bands. These musical numbers have inspired scenes in Western films such as Vanity Fair and Moulin Rouge.
Global Bollywood shows how this currency in popular culture and among diasporic communities marks only the latest phase of the genre’s world travels. This interdisciplinary collection describes the many roots and routes of the Bollywood song and dance spectacle. Examining the reception of Bollywood music in places as diverse as Indonesia and Israel, the essays offer a stimulating redefinition of globalization, highlighting the cultural influence of Hindi film music from its origins early in the twentieth century today.
Sangita Gopal is assistant professor of English at the University of Oregon.
Introduction: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti
PART I. HOME TERRAINS
1. Tapping the Mass Market: The Commercial Life of Hindi Film Songs Anna Morcom
2. The Sounds of Modernity: The Evolution of Bollywood Film Song Biswarup Sen
3. From Bombay to Bollywood: Tracking Cinematic Musical Tours Nilanjana Bhattacharjya and Monika Mehta
4. Bollwood and Beyond: The Transnational Economy of Film Production in Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad Shanti Kumar
5. The Music of Intolerable Love: Political Conjugality in Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se Anustup Basu
PART II. ECCENTRIC ORBITS
6. Intimate Neighbours: Bolllywood, Dangdut Music, and Globalising Modernities in Indonesia Bettina David
7. The Ubiquitous Nonpresence of India: Peripheral Visions from Egyptian Popular Culture Walter Armbrust
8. Appropriating the Uncodable: Hindi Song and dance Sequences in Israeli State Promotional Commercials Ronnie Parciack
PART III. PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS
9. Dancing to an Indian Beat: “Dola” Goes My Diasporic Heart Sangita Shresthova
10. Food and Cassettes: Encounters with Indian Filmsong Edward K. Chan
11. Queer as Desis: Secret Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Films in Diasporic Urban Ethnoscapes Rajinder Dudrah
12. Bollwood Gets Funky: American Hip-Hop, Basement Bhangra, and the Racial Politics of Music Richard Zumkhawala
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Index